GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Sunny, warm. In theory, there could be a bit of a shower later today as a disturbance moves through overhead, but really, we're looking at near-cloudless skies (once the fog clears) with temps reaching the mid to upper 70s, maybe even 80 in spots. Winds from the southwest, lows tonight in the low 60s.Nestling season. This season's crop of young birds is on its way.
Like, on Monday, one of the eggs in a kestrel box maintained by VINS hatched—and yesterday morning, the hatchling was joined by two more. Here's video.
And from Norwich, Charlotte Metcalf sends along what looks like an abstract painting, but is actually young bluebirds huddled together. "In the past," she writes, "the family has not been successful because other birds have robbed their nest before the babies have emerged…"
You know the street: It's the handy little dogleg that gets you from E. Wheelock over to Lebanon Street, past the football stadium. Starting June 18, Dartmouth says, it will close so crews can install an underground distribution piping vault as it shifts from steam to hot water heating. “We know this work will impact traffic patterns, but it is critical to the success of our energy transition," says VP Josh Keniston—and to preserve an elm at the corner. The street will still be open to pedestrians, the college says in its announcement.
The request comes after a townwide reappraisal that has produced sharp increases in home valuations and widespread alarm in town. Listers and the company that did the appraisals will hold informal meetings with residents starting tomorrow, and in her request for a police presence, town treasurer Cheryl Lindbergh reported a "concerning" phone call. “The immediate emotions are about being able to stay in town and pay the taxes,” she tells the
Valley News
's Emma Roth-Wells. “This is an emotional matter for many people.”
Three Bradford VT fire trucks taken out of service. That's because they failed an independent safety inspection last week, reports Alex Nuti-de Biasi in the Journal Opinion newsletter. As a result, fire departments in Newbury and Corinth will act as first responders for Bradford. "Emergency repairs returned a 30-year-old engine to service one day after it failed inspection," Nuti-de Biasi writes, but half of the Bradford fleet remains out of commission.SPONSORED: Willing Hands needs your support TODAY! Willing Hands has until 5:00 pm today to reach our fundraising goal, and we need your help! Support our NH Gives fundraiser and kick off summer with a gift that ensures garden-fresh, local food is available to everyone in our community. Your donation today makes an impact all season. Make your gift through our NH Gives portal here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by Willing Hands.Summer theater on its way. As you'll see below, the New London Barn Playhouse starts up its season tonight, but there's lots more out there, writes Susan Apel in Artful. Shaker Bridge has a one-night-only production of What the Constitution Means to Me coming on Saturday, Opera North kicks off its summer with an opera/circus mashup of The Little Prince on June 27, and North Country Community Theater's production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels takes over the Lebanon Opera House starting June 20—which is the same day the Dorset Theater Festival with Salvage, set in a small-town dump.SPONSORED: Ted Levin invites you on his 9th Costa Rican natural history adventure! Remote yet hospitable, the country sports old-growth jungles, volcanoes, shorelines, remote beaches, and twisted timberlines. Last year's trip recorded 311 species of birds, including hummingbirds, parrots, macaws, and a nest of resplendent quetzals. Also, mammals (including fresh puma tracks) and reptiles and amphibians (including American crocodiles and an eyelash pitviper). Experience the beauty and remarkable diversity of Costa Rica! Email for more info here or at the burgundy link.Hanover police arrest gun suspect. Last Friday evening, the HPD says in a press release, officers responded to a report of a Dartmouth student being threatened on E. Wheelock opposite Alumni Gym. The student and a man were "involved in a confrontation while driving their vehicles," in the course of which the suspect "brandished a handgun and pointed it directly at the victim before fleeing the area." An investigation identified him and yesterday, an officer on patrol spotted him driving in downtown Hanover, stopped him, and found a loaded handgun allegedly used in the incident. He was cited and released.Three Upper Valley Rite Aids to close soon. They're in Bethel, Randolph, and Newport NH—and as the company works through bankruptcy, the pharmacy portion of Newport's store could close as soon as tomorrow, reports Marion Umpleby in the VN. Patrons' records will be transferred to the Claremont Rite Aid (about which there's no news yet) unless they direct otherwise. Meanwhile, Randolph's store will close Sunday, and in Bethel, the pharmacy will close June 20, with the rest of the store following a week later.NH governor signs school voucher expansion into law. The measure removes the income eligibility restrictions on Education Freedom Accounts and "will allow any family in New Hampshire to receive at least $4,265 per child next school year to spend on private school tuition or other educational expenses," reports the Monitor's Jeremy Margolis. It caps enrollment in the program at 10,000 students in its first year. Last year, enrollment passed the 5,000 mark. Though the program initially focused on low- and middle-income families, supporters in recent years have argued it should be open to anyone.She also signs the "parental bill of rights" into law. GOP legislators have been pushing the measure for years, and yesterday—unlike Chris Sununu before her—Gov. Kelly Ayotte gave it her okay, saying it "ensures parents are the central voice in their children’s education." Though the new law includes some already existing rights, like opting a child out of sex ed classes, it adds some new ones, writes USA Today's Margie Cullen, including requiring school personnel to respond “promptly” with “accurate, truthful, and complete disclosure regarding any and all matters related to their minor child.”And she nominated a new education commissioner. It was a busy schools day for Ayotte, as she tapped Caitlin Davis, a longtime ed department official and, for the last eight years, director of education analytics and resources, to run the department. In the role, according to the governor's office, Davis led an effort to modernize data systems and infrastructure. If the Executive Council approves her nomination at its meeting tomorrow, she'll replace Frank Edelblut, whose retirement from the post Ayotte announced in March.NH Supremes rule existing statewide education property tax is constitutional. The tax, known by its acronym SWEPT, "typically results in towns with higher property values collecting far more from the SWEPT than towns with lower property values," explains Ethan DeWitt in NH Bulletin. When funds exceed what they need for their schools, those towns are allowed to keep them, resulting in a lower per-capita tax rate; plaintiffs in 2022 challenged the tax as unequal. In a 3-1 decision, the court disagreed, but did not rule on a related challenge to the state's formula for per-pupil spending.
The decision, reports NHPR's Annmarie Timmins, yesterday drew an array of responses. “It's a very disappointing decision because it locks in a real unfair component of the current property tax system,” one of the lawyers arguing the case tells her. “Property taxes are a huge burden to people. They're by far the largest tax in the state.” Gov. Kelly Ayotte and AG John Formella praised it as leaving education funding decisions in the hands of the legislature.
VT farmers markets search for "forever security." As you know, the Norwich Farmers Market is looking to buy the land across the road from its current site, which is leased from the Co-op Food Stores. If it pulls the purchase off, it will become only the second farmers market in the state—after Brattleboro—to own its own land. But it's not going to be the last, VT Public's Howard Weiss-Tisman suggests. "While it might have worked 50 years ago to have a bunch of farmers set up in a parking lot," one market advocate tells him, rising land values are putting pressure on markets to think hard about securing their future. As pool of housing vouchers shrinks, some VT families could wind up homeless again. Carly Berlin's piece for VTDigger/VT Public starts and ends with Hannah Patten, a 37-year-old single mom who, after two years of effort, got a voucher to move with her kids into an apartment—where, she says, "we’re happy, we’re healthy, we’re secure.” Her joy was short-lived: federal cuts have forced public housing agencies to cut back—and even rescind—Section 8 vouchers. Or as Patten says, "you’re just…you’re giving it to me and then taking it right away.” Berlin details the big picture and Patten's story.“Precision planning, team synchronisation, and technical accuracy.” We’re talking scaffolding, folks, and no one does it better (at least this year) than a team from Lithuania. In Scaffmag, Daniel Norton reports on what amounts to the scaffolding Olympics. The Lithuanians took the ScaffChamp title in front of a home crowd of 600 in Vilnius; more than 10,000 people watched the livestream and saw history made: the first woman—from Chile—to compete. Twenty teams vying for the title had to build an assigned structure and safely dismantle it. The US came in 14th. Lots of scaffolding eye candy.This week's Throughlines. Challenge yourself! Facing a grid of 16 words, it's up to you to connect four words at a time to create "throughlines" for three of today's Daybreak items. The other four words are decoys, so watch out!The Wednesday Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday's Daybreak. If you're new to Daybreak, this is a puzzle along the lines of the NYT's Wordle—only it's not just some random word, but a word that actually appeared here yesterday.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it stick around by hitting the maroon button:
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The Wednesday Acoustic Jam at The Filling Station in WRJ is back, starting around 6 pm. It'll be led by Jes Raymond—in a late-night email, usual organizer Jakob Breitbach writes from Ireland, "Congratulations to [Filling Station co-owner] Anna Guenther & Co. for all their hard work (and undying patience) rehabbing, renovating and revitalizing everyone’s favorite towny dive bar."
The regular free Wednesday night concerts in S. Pomfret will run through Sept. 24, starting tonight with van-dwelling singer-songwriter Klug, who's touring the country promoting a sophomore album,
Lost Dog
. 6:30 pm, and note: Parking is in the field
across
from Saskadena Six.
Hartford High history teacher Israel Provoncha—a living history musketman himself (and a soldier in Jay Craven's film,
Lost Nation
)—will talk about reenactments from the inside. 7 pm at the Greater Hartford United Church of Christ in Hartford Village.
The subtitle on Hebra Flaster's memoir, "From a Cuban Barrio to a New Hampshire Mill Town", gives you a sense of its scope. She was five when her working-class family fled Cuba, leaving the revolution it had once supported, winding up in a southern NH mill town in 1967. 7 pm.
The musical stage version of Robert James Waller's best-seller about a four-day love affair between a
National Geographic
photographer and an Iowa housewife "captures the lyrical expanse of America's heartland along with the yearning entangled in the eternal question, 'What if...?,'" the playhouse writes. 7:30 tonight, runs through June 22.
And for today...
Not all of us managed to catch the Tony Awards on Sunday night, and so we missed this:
for a... "medley" is too weak a term... of songs from the show. As a commenter writes, "
How selfless of team 'Hamilton' for allowing The Tony Awards to be a part of their show.
"
Or another: "Not enough people talking about the fact that Daveed can still nail that jump TEN years later?"
See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers, writers, and librarians who think you should read. this. book. now!
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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